Romans 3:23
All have sinned. Of course, starting with Eve’s original sin, except Our Lord.
Does Romans 3:23 somehow prove Protestantism? Not at all.
John the Baptist received sanctifying grace in the womb - God can infuse grace at any time He desires, including at or even prior to conception. Not in the bible? Wrong - Luke 1:27- 30 is the scriptural proof text for the Catholic belief.
Kecheritomene is a perfect passive Greek participle translated as: completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace. A perfect participle denotes an action that has been completed.
Highly favored one is a later deliberately imprecise mistranslation.
The detailed correct translation is “full of grace which thou hast received”.
A person may choose (opinion) not to believe the Catholic translation of Luke 1:28. However, blithely ignoring the fact that the earliest (Catholic) Church fathers writing long before Luther also held Mary’s sinlessness to be true. For an example, take Theodotus of Ancyra writing in early 5th century A.D., praising the Blessed Mother as a Virgin as “included in woman’s sex but without a share in woman’s fault”. His is just one example of many that the Church has unbrokenly taught that Mary’s perpetual virginity. This means the eastern churches as well, not just “Rome”.
Even if a person chooses to ignore the scriptural doctrine contained in Luke 1:28; the problem remains:
Not Catholics aren’t scriptural but: whose interpretation of Scripture contains the Truth? Luther and has band of heretical so called reformers who came along MUCH later, or the true Church who has never deviated from her intrepretation of Luke 1:28?
The question is actually: which “opinion” on the interpretation of scripture is correct? The excerpt from the book reiterates this problem, which is actually the issue; the idea that Catholics aren’t scriptural is a straw man and misstates the thesis that ought to be addressed, which is which scriptural interpretation defines the Truth.
To conclude: Romans 3:23 is true AND does not somehow disprove Luke 1:28. Again:
God can infuse sanctifying Grace into a sinful soul at any time He desires, including the moment before conception. He is God, after all!
Wow! Did you intend to exhibit total lack of understanding or just repeating the twisted view of Catholicism>
A perfect, passive, participle can be described like this.
I completely emptied a 100 bushel wagon load of corn into an empty 1000 bu bin. It was done completely and perfectly. Now that I have it totally, completely, and perfectly unloaded the unloading is in the past and will forever remain in the past. The 1000 bu bin is however NOT "full of corn" as there is still 90% of that bin still without corn in it.
The correct translation of Luke 1:28 can NOT be "full of grace" any more than it can be said that the 1000 bu bin is "full of corn".
The word for full in Greek is pleres. It is NOT used in reference to Mary but is used in reference to both Christ and Stephen as being "full of grace". The Holy Spirit did NOT make a mistake in not using pleres when referencing Mary.
Rather, that is a parroted fallacious polemic. You argument is based upon the refuted premise that Lk. 1:28 says Mary is full of grace (and uniquely so), but which it simply does not say. Kecharitomene (one form of the verb "charitoo") in Lk. 1:28, is never used for "full" elsewhere, but Lk. 1:28 simply says she was graced, favored, enriched with grace, as in Eph.1:6. Much more technical here :
Here’s the text IN GREEK: καὶ εἰσελθὼν πρὸς αὐτὴν εἶπεν Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη, ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ. κεχαριτωμένη, is the pf. pass. ptcp. of χαριτόω (charitoō). It is the single Greek word kexaritomena and means highly favored, make accepted, make graceful, etc. REPEATED: It is a passive participle derived from charitoō. It does not mean "full of grace" or ‘completely filled with grace’ which is "plaras karitos" (plaras = full and karitos = Grace) in the Greek....
In contrast, the only one (though in some mss Stephen, in Acts 6:8) said to be full of grace is the Lord Jesus, "full ("plērēs) of grace (charis) and truth," using "plērēs," which denotes "full" 17 other places in the NT. If Mary was perfectly full of grace as bearing Christ then it would say she was full of grace, as Christ was, (plērēs charis).
However, seeking to compel Scripture to support her tradition of men, Lk, 1:28 was wrongly rendered "full of grace" in the DRB, rather than "highly favored" or similar, as in Rome's current official New American Bible, “Hail, favored one!" (http://usccb.org/bible/luke/1) Yet the DRB translates Eph. 1:6 as "in which he hath graced us."
Nor does kecharitomene being a perfect passive participle translate into meaning a "a perfection of grace," or distinctively a past action, in distinction to echaritosen (another form of the verb "charitoo") used in Eph. 1:6, as there also it refers to a present state based upon a past action, "To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted [echaritosen] in the beloved." (Ephesians 1:6)
See more on this issue here as Whte gets into detail with the Greek. (And notes that the fact that the Roman Catholic Church has to attempt to build such a complex theology on the form of a participle in a greeting should say a great deal in and of itself.)
And as Roman Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin said of Luke 1:28 on the word kecharitomene:
"This is a Greek term that you could use in that exact grammatical formation for someone else who wasn't immaculately conceived and the sentence would still make sense" like Mary's grandmother). He went on to say, "This is something where I said previously, we need the additional source of information from tradition and we need the guidance of the magisterium to be able to put these pieces together." Meaning the text does not teach the IM, nor is that necessary, but tradition becomes binding doctrine under the ultimate presumed authority of Rome.
Moreover, while Mary is highly blessed among women, and is to be honored according to what is written, this does not translate in the type of supererogation of praise seen in Catholicism, in which humble Mary is made into an almost almighty demigoddess!
The Great and All Powerful Catholic fallback...
Rome says GOD could do something; therefore it can say that HE did do it!